Tax To Rise In Washington Twp., Lehigh County, Budget

Spending in Washington Township would go down but taxes would go up under the proposed budget for 1991, a township official said.

Township supervisors propose spending $1.27 million next year, down from $1.5 million this year. Supervisors expect to adopt the budget at their meeting tonight.

Accurately predicting the proposed budget's effect on tax bills is difficult, township Secretary/Treasurer Dianne Frantz said, because all taxable property in the township was reassessed this year.

"Some people's taxes will be going up because their assessments will go up," Frantz said. And, she said, "some of us are going to have higher taxes even though our assessment is lower."

Most of the township's revenue comes from the 1 percent earned-income tax the township shares with the Northern Lehigh School District. Next year, the township expects to collect $320,000 in earned-income tax, down from $358,000 this year.

The township plans to collect $79,800 in real estate tax from residents next year, the proposed budget says. This year's budget called for collecting $71,906 in real estate tax.

The Lehigh County Department of Assessment this year hiked the total assessed value of taxable land in the township to $114.65 million -- nearly four times the earlier assessment of $28.8 million.